The businesses involved, which vary from gas stations to liquor stores to fast food restaurants, use special high-definition surveillance cameras, with the video feed streaming directly back to Detroit police headquarters.

The businesses involved, which vary from gas stations to liquor stores to fast food restaurants, use special high-definition surveillance cameras, with the video feed streaming directly back to Detroit police headquarters.

...it doesn't get much more Orwellian than that.

As long as companies are choosing to do this voluntarily, I don't see the problem. How is that any different then having a push-button alarm that goes right to police headquarters

Ohio9 wrote:As long as companies are choosing to do this voluntarily, I don't see the problem.

The "problem" is societal. That anyone would volunteer to police surveillance is troubling.

How is that any different then having a push-button alarm that goes right to police headquarters

Having a panic button gives you control over when government is involved. Giving them a camera to watch you 24/7 is giving away your privacy.

...but "if you have nothing to hide...", right?

Well I guess some businesses feel it's worth it for the trade-off of maximizing the chances that robbers or other criminals will be caught. So long as they freely choose to do this, and have the right to revoke it at any time, I'm not losing any sleep over it.

Only a matter of time before it becomes a mandatory condition of obtaining a business license. The truly scary part about this is how many welcome it.I'm an outlier, so maybe that's why I just don't get it.

Nathan wrote:Only a matter of time before it becomes a mandatory condition of obtaining a business license. The truly scary part about this is how many welcome it.I'm an outlier, so maybe that's why I just don't get it.

You get it. It is the progression of the nanny state where the criminals are armed, the good guys are helpless, and the State tries to safeguard everybody (including the criminals).Here's a better system, in all aspects better than what we have now: Eliminate the police, courts, and prison system. Taxes will go down dramatically.Every citizen will be armed (of course the criminals too, as they are now).Citizens will shoot the worst criminals. Petty offenders will be disciplined by their families, or by citizen commitees.Criminals will be scarce.An armed society is a polite society.

Someone will argue the citizens commitees will evolve into police. Not a good idea, that's what got us to where we are now.

LWP wrote:You get it. It is the progression of the nanny state where the criminals are armed, the good guys are helpless, and the State tries to safeguard everybody (including the criminals).Here's a better system, in all aspects better than what we have now: Eliminate the police, courts, and prison system. Taxes will go down dramatically.Every citizen will be armed (of course the criminals too, as they are now).Citizens will shoot the worst criminals. Petty offenders will be disciplined by their families, or by citizen commitees.Criminals will be scarce.An armed society is a polite society.

Someone will argue the citizens commitees will evolve into police. Not a good idea, that's what got us to where we are now.

But LWP, that almost sounds like

Anarchy.jpg (29.4 KiB) Viewed 2522 times

"Our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives."

LWP wrote:The literal origin of "anarchy" is "without rulers". The basis of these United States is to reject rulers.Please refer back to "An armed society is a polite society."

Precisely my point.Anarchy - a/an = to negate; archy/arch/archon(tyrant) = ruler - an absence of rulers or tyrants. Of course, a United States could never be actually anarchical, as a state is administered by a government which is itself a system or group of rulers. The "Founding Fathers" should have left it at the Declaration of Independence instead of setting up their "limited" government which quickly evolved into Leviathan.

"Our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives."

It is the evolution of systems which is our downfall, but that started at the bottom. The people wanted protection, the towns wanted help, the cities couldn't affort services, the states gave up their power in exchange for kickbacks from the Federal. A government can't rule unless the people give it the power. A government could be restricted to providing infrastructure and national protection, as the Founders envisioned, if the people are not sheep. And your "quickly" is not true, it took 200 years for strong men to evolve into sheep and the government to evolve to tyranny. The evolution is so complete now that most Americans prefer it, consider it normal, and the few strong men left are anomalies.

Nathan wrote:Only a matter of time before it becomes a mandatory condition of obtaining a business license. The truly scary part about this is how many welcome it.I'm an outlier, so maybe that's why I just don't get it.

I certainly get where you are coming from. If I owned a business, I wouldn't participate in this program. However I'm not going to assume that just because it exists in optional form doesn't mean it will inevitably become mandatory.

LWP wrote:It is the evolution of systems which is our downfall, but that started at the bottom. The people wanted protection, the towns wanted help, the cities couldn't affort services, the states gave up their power in exchange for kickbacks from the Federal. A government can't rule unless the people give it the power. A government could be restricted to providing infrastructure and national protection, as the Founders envisioned, if the people are not sheep. And your "quickly" is not true, it took 200 years for strong men to evolve into sheep and the government to evolve to tyranny. The evolution is so complete now that most Americans prefer it, consider it normal, and the few strong men left are anomalies.

I would argue that while it did take more than a couple of centuries for the overreach we are now experiencing to manifest itself, the "limited" government set up after the War of Independence did quickly become tyrannical - just not as tyrannical as we are sadly used to - as evidenced by examples such as the Aliens and Sedition Act and the events leading to and resulting from the Whiskey Rebellion.

Regarding your statements about the people giving the government power due to their wants and lack of strength, I am in agreement, but I feel that further down the chain of causalities we find that the concept of civilization (literally translating as "the culture of cities") itself is to blame, though I doubt that it is at the absolute root of the problem. Civilized men are interdependent upon one another, and if history (pattern recognition) tells us one thing it is that free men chose to be independent. Civilization, which is always a collectivization, will to some degree or another collectivize both resources and rights, and when rights are collectivized, individual rights are not respected, and a ruler or group of rulers will strive to dominate everyone within their sphere of influence. Therefore, only those men who are independent of civilization (and thus "uncivilized") and are willing to deal with the consequences of living without the benefits of civilization can ever be truly free.

"Our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives."

Yes, of course. Civilization is both a curse and a blessing. I prefer the blessing part where minds and bodies working together produce advances and advantages a loner cannot. Man is a social animal. A little government is not a bad thing, we must keep it small and impotent.

The problem with a small and impotent government is that they tend to grow into something far more dangerous. Once they accept any of it at all, people get lazy and allow it to become a monster, or those with an agenda attack under false colors in order to scare their subjects into accepting heavier, shorter chains. From the standpoints of both pragmatism and principle, I am not in favor of any degree of government.

"Our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives."

I would not argue to change your mind because your position has its merits. My position is that the social tendency of humans will always create a society and then a government. We must try harder to keep the government small, at some point we must learn from our mistakes.